How Ukraine is boosting power generation

Russia has routinely attacked Ukraine’s energy sector in the winter when the power grid is under the most strain, but this year, they seem to be getting a headstart. 

On September 8, long before winter even set in, Russians launched several waves of attacks on thermal power plants, causing significant damage to the equipment and bringing the plant’s power generation to a complete halt six weeks before the start of the heating season.

During the 2025-2026 striking campaign, Russia damaged or destroyed all 15 of the country’s thermal power plants — an all-time high during the war. Consequently, Ukraine had a great deal of work to do to prepare for attacks expected to be even more severe this season.

Despite the attacks that have already begun, three types of recovery efforts are underway:

Repairing existing power plants is much easier and cheaper than constructing new thermal and combined-cycle power stations. However, what is easy to repair is also easy to lose. 

The Trypilska Thermal Power Plant is a striking example of this. The large, state-owned facility near Kyiv was critically damaged in 2024 before being restored. Then it was destroyed again in November 2025 in one of the hardest blows to Ukraine’s energy sector throughout the war. It is now being restored for the second time. 

Any repair also has its limits; some damage is simply impossible to fix, and it’s not a matter of money. Volodymyr Omelchenko, director of energy programs at the Razumkov Center, explains this using Kyiv as an example, where more than 2 million people depend on three large thermal power plants: “If the enemy takes them out — and that’s entirely possible — there’s nothing to replace them with: at best, new distributed generation will cover about 20 percent of the lost capacity.”

Among all sectors, hydroelectric and nuclear power generation take the longest to recover.

A hydroelectric power plant is a massive concrete dam, so rebuilding one after serious damage requires years of major construction, and no amount of funding can shorten that timeframe. 

Ukrhydroenergo, the state-owned company that owns all of the country’s hydroelectric and pumped-storage power plants, received a €75 million ($87,6 million) loan from the EBRD for critical equipment. Even with this assistance, fully restoring the Dnipro Hydroelectric Power Plant — one of the country’s largest hydroelectric assets — will take several years.

Restoring nuclear power generation involves a whole different set of issues. Fuel replacement and scheduled maintenance of reactor units are subject to strict nuclear safety regulations that cannot be postponed or expedited, even when the power grid urgently requires every megawatt-hour.

"Nine nuclear reactors typically generate 8 gigawatts (GW) in the winter, but only about 5 GW are currently available. Three reactors are undergoing maintenance that cannot be expedited," Omelchenko explained. "Add to that imports and distributed gas-fired generation, and you get 12-13.5 GW for the entire country. This is compared to a winter peak of around 18 GW."

Ukraine is working to decentralize everything it possibly can in order to insulate Ukrainians from the impact of damaged energy infrastructure and hinder destruction. However, decentralizing the energy sector has its pros and cons.

Fortunately, distributed gas-fired generation has grown. 

"A single 500-megawatt unit and ten 50-megawatt facilities may have the same installed capacity, but they have completely different military risk profiles,” Mykhailo Babiychuk, DiXi Group's General Manager for Security and Resilience, explained. “The loss of a single large facility immediately takes away a significant portion of the capacity, whereas a distributed architecture allows the system to degrade gradually and retain some functionality."

As of June 18, Ukraine had installed 1,806 megawatts (MW) of such capacity.

Less encouraging is that when the government attempted to accelerate this process through its own tender for over 1.3 GW of new capacity, the private sector committed only 78 MW in the first phase, less than one-tenth of the stated target. The largest quotas were allocated to the most damaged frontline territories, where businesses are reluctant to invest due to the risks.

Serhiy Kovalenko, the CEO of Yasno, a retail energy supplier, noted that approximately 65 percent of the new equipment his company is installing for businesses is for energy storage rather than power generation. Typically, this is the company’s lithium-ion battery (BESS), which does not produce electricity, but instead, charges from the grid or solar panels and then discharges the electricity back during outages. Demand for these systems is growing by about 20 percent each year. 

"Energy storage makes it possible to weather short power outages while providing an opportunity to profit from arbitrage when there are no power issues," he said, explaining the rationale behind this growth.

Last year, energy facilities protected by the Recovery Agency were attacked 62 times by Shaheds and missiles, yet not a single transformer was damaged.

This year, the agency has taken on protecting additional facilities. Serhiy Sukhomlyn, the former head of the agency, said that protecting Kyiv’s substations is 80 percent complete. "The situation in Kyiv is the most challenging today," he said, adding that, in February, when the resilience plans were just being developed, Kyiv was only 1.5 percent ready for the coming winter. Now, he estimates its readiness at 40 percent.

This winter will be especially challenging because Ukraine now has almost no ballistic missile interceptors to protect its energy infrastructure from such strikes: “The Agency is currently not providing missile defense protection due to a lack of funding,” said Roman Komendant, acting head and deputy head for digital development at the Agency.

"I would define the threshold of rationality [for restoration] based on at least five parameters: the cost of restoration, the time required to restore capacity, the remaining service life of the equipment, the facility's systemic value for a specific region, and the risk of losing that capacity again," Mykhailo Babiychuk told BuildBack.

1. Chornobyl NPP now has a solar plant

On September 9, Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal announced the launch of a 2-MW solar power plant at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant site. 

This new power generation facility will supply electricity to the new safe confinement — the arch covering the destroyed fourth reactor — as well as to the facilities for managing radioactive waste and storing spent nuclear fuel.

The power mainly keeps the confinement's ventilation system running to prevent corrosion of the old sarcophagus underneath. It also powers radiation and structural monitoring, the cranes needed for future dismantling work, and fire-safety systems.

The plant will generate about 5 percent of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant site's annual energy consumption. The total project budget exceeded $825,000, and the project was implemented with support from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the governments of Lithuania and Japan.

Serhiy Tarakanov, the director of the Chornobyl plant, said the main goal is to meet the facility's energy needs during its long-term decommissioning phase.

2. Kharkiv opens its 10th underground school

In September, Kharkiv opened a new underground school with capacity for 2,768 students, who will study in two shifts. The school has autonomous power and ventilation systems, a 100-seat assembly hall, a computer lab, and a sports field built directly on top of the structure. 

This is the city's first school to be built with state budget co-financing rather than relying solely on city funds and donor support.

"Today we've covered 52 to 53 percent of all children in Kharkiv. We need to keep building... Demand is enormous," the mayor of the city Ihor Terekhov said.

The underground schools were also designed with a postwar future in mind. Once the war ends, the city plans to convert them into youth hubs instead of leaving the space unused.

By: Oksana Zabolotna

Ukraine Recovery Programme: Subventions to Local Budgets

Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine №1061 dated August 26, 2026

Why it’s important: This draft law channels almost UAH 2 billion ($44,6 million) directly to regional and local budgets for the implementation of concrete recovery projects. 

The allocation covers more than 80 local budgets and provides substantial funding to regions heavily affected by the war, particularly the Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions. At the same time, the resolution reallocates funding within an existing mechanism and does not require the introduction of new instruments or additional resources. 

Proposals:

Stage: Entered into force on August 29.  

Initiator: The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine

What’s next: Implementation of the resolution.

FINANCES | The World Bank will provide Ukraine with $841 million in budget support backed by guarantees from the Canadian government. The funds will cover state budget expenditures on pension payments under the PEACE in Ukraine project.

FINANCES | The Cabinet of Ministers is considering raising the VAT rate from 20 percent to 21 percent to replenish a special fund that insures businesses against war risks: losses incurred by Ukrainian companies due to Russian attacks this year could reach $10 billion.

EU ACCESSION | Hungary has blocked the opening of accession negotiating Clusters 2 and 3 (internal market and competitiveness and inclusive growth, respectively) for the second time and has yet to present Kyiv with specific demands to lift the veto.

AGRICULTURE | By October, Ukraine may lack storage capacity for more than 9 million metric tons of grain. The EU delegation attributes this risk to exports being half what they were last year due to attacks on ports and shipping routes. 

AGRICULTURE | Since the beginning of September, Ukraine has exported 630,000 metric tons of agricultural products — about 40 percent of the potential volume given current port operations, compared with 33 percent in August.

ENERGY | The Supervisory Board of Naftogaz has announced an open competition for the position of chairman of the board. An international executive search firm will conduct the selection process in coordination with the EBRD.

“What kind of recovery can we even talk about when the enemy is constantly destroying everything?” a colleague asked me as I was preparing the material for this issue.

I paused to think. Indeed, is it fair to call this recovery? Or is it more of a temporary Band-Aid from winter to winter?

In the end, I concluded that many innovations and cutting-edge technologies have been given a chance to develop. They are flourishing, not declining. 

So what is this if not recovery?